January 27, 2016

Silver Tsunami to Bring 25 Million More Medicare Beneficiaries by 2036

Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO)projectsthat Medicare enrollment will grow by more than 30 percent over the next ten years. In fact the population of seniors in the United States will grow from 55 million today to more than 80 million by 2036. The huge growth in the senior population is called the Silver Tsunami, and that term is becoming popular on social media.

CBO included the Medicare enrollment numbers in a report released earlier this week. The numbers will clearly mean that major political and economic changes are in store for the country. Seniors have been an important voting bloc for years, and the retirement of baby boomers is making that truer than ever. The new numbers show that seniors will become an even greater force in future elections.

POLITICO Pulsenotes that the report also contains important data concerning the Medicare Trust Fund, faster growth of Medicaid, and revised Obamacare enrollment estimates.

Taking the Silver Tsunami into account, CBO calculates that Medicare’s hospital insurance trust fund will be exhausted in 2026. That’s four years earlier than the program’s trusteesprojectedlast summer.

“The Alliance is working to strengthen Medicare,” said Richard Fiesta, Executive Director of the Alliance. “Giving Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug prices is one way we can limit further out-of-pocket costs to seniors.”

The report notes that the number of Americans on Medicaid is also anticipated to grow faster. CBO previously projected that 11.5 million Americans would enroll in Medicaid through the Affordable Care Act by 2025. Its new projection is 14.5 million. In dollars, Medicaid spending will increase by 8.8% year-over-year, to $31 billion in 2016.

About 13 million Americans will enroll in Obamacare through the Affordable Care Act this year. Eleven million of that total will receive subsidies. That’s much lower than earlier CBO estimates. However, it is higher than the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ target of covering about 10 million people in the exchanges at the end of 2016.

Many policy experts believe that the new estimate is likely based on more of the 19 holdout states accepting the ACA’s Medicaid expansion.

The Silver Tsunami will also affect Social Security. Spending on Social Security reached $882 billion in 2015, up 4% from such spending in 2014.